1. Field
The present disclosure pertains to the field of thermal and power management. More particularly, the present disclosure pertains to dynamically configuring the operating point as utilized for thermal management of an integrated circuit (IC).
2. Description of Related Art
Power management schemes allow for dynamically adjusting the power consumption of an electronic component in order to meet the power consumption requirements for various types of systems and integrated devices, such as, servers, laptops, integrated devices and desktops. Typically, thermal management schemes provide a means for adjusting power consumption in order to limit the integrated device's operating temperature. The maximum allowable operating temperature for an integrated circuit is a function of the specific characteristics of a given unit. For example, units that have a higher operating frequency may be allowed to operate at higher temperatures than other units of the same design that have lower operating frequencies. The allowable operating temperature of a device may also be a function of the voltage supplied to the device or some other characteristic that varies across the distribution of parts built from a single design. Because these characteristics may change over the multi-year lifetime during which a specific design is manufactured, the allowable operating temperatures may also change over this manufacturing lifetime. Likewise, different units of the same design will have different power consumption. As a result, the power reduction necessary to meet a thermal management requirement may change from unit to unit across the manufacturing lifetime of the design. Hence, taking an identical action in response to a thermal event on all parts manufactured from a particular design may be non-optimal.
One means of configuring the operating point for a thermal management event would be to allow software programmability. With this approach, software must know the relevant operating characteristics of that specific part, However, such a scheme may be susceptible to software tampering to allow improper and unsupported voltage, frequency,  or thermal operating points.